Timeline of Portable Consoles

1976 

Mattel electronic Auto Race

The first handheld console was the mattel auto race in 1976 and was a very simple racing game with 3 cars repeatedly racing against each other. The basic idea of the console like any driving game. The game features 2 switches 1 was to start the race and another to control the gears so that you could make the car a lot faster. The console also had a simple steer which was another switch that would make the car into either the left or right lanes allowing it to dodge on coming traffic.

1979 

Microvision Block Buster

The Microvision block buster was created by Microvision in 1979 has their attempt at entering the portable market while it had a large number of problems. The worst thing about this handheld console is a thing called screen rot this is where the console basically began to destroyed the screen due to it heating and causing the liquid inside to expand and leak through the screen. Another huge flaw is that the console broke when the console was over used due to the created added a plastic cover over all the bottom. The console itself only played a single game like the others of its time due to the fact there were no suitable ways off adding multiple games to it.

1989 

Nintendo Gameboy 

Nintendo made the Gameboy in 1989 as a way to increase there successful market of game consoles because they already had a large grip over the market with the NES and SNES but nothing to match in the portable console market. So the Gameboy was created and is by far the most successful console of its genre. This is because of its long battery life, decent sound quality and good screen resolution. The high end performance came from its CPU (a Custom 8-bit Sharp LR35902), this adds beautiful 160x144 pixels. The next year the Gameboy advanced was realised and continued to increase the Gameboy because of it having more colour, improved sound and all around better quality.

1991

Sega Game Gear

The Sega Game Gear was Sega's first attempt into entering the handheld console market. the console was based on the 8bit generation making it perfect to play older arcade games such as sonic which was its most popular game. The console would take 6 batteries and usual last between 4 and 5 hours so it wasn't that good with battery life. The console had several accessories made in order to try and increase its popularity such things like a additional battery pack, a TV tuner (which doesn't work on later models) and a Super Wide Gear (which gave the console a larger screen because its original was rather small this did have a considerable affect on battery life. The main processor is a Zilog Z80 8bit system, this gave the game gear 32 different colours and a maximum sprites 64.

1998

Gameboy Colour

Nintendo wanting to continue of there portable handheld consoles they released the Gameboy colour in 1998. This console was twice as fast and twice the memory as its original the standard Gameboy. The most impressive thing about this console was tat it was backwards compatible with the younger models games making the first handheld console to do that. This gave Nintendo a huge lead of its competitors because there handheld device already had a large library of games. The most impressive thing about the Gameboy colour was that it could display a maximum 54 colours on the screen at anyone time. This console had the same screen resolution as both the original gameboy and the Sega Game Gear.

2001

Gameboy Advanced

Still continuing there successful line of portable handheld consoles. Nintendo went to release the Gameboy advance it had a large screen that its predecessors and had a lot more processing power caused by its 16.8 MHz 32-bit ARM7TDMI with embedded memory. Another nice feature is that the console had shoulder buttons on either side giving more selection when using fighting games. Two years after the release of the advance a smaller version called the Gameboy advance SP was released this had the same processing power as the original but was smaller and had a rechargeable battery back. Both these consoles were backwards compatible because I gave them a huge library the second they were released. 

2003

N-Gage

Seeing the enormous money to be made from the rapidly growing industry of handheld consoles, Nokia decided to try too enter the market with the N-Gage. The idea of this console was that it would be a mobile phone, a MP3 player as well as being able to play different games. This wasn't a very popular console selling only 3 million units despite having online capabilities and a nice little 104MHz ARM 920T CPU.

2004

Nintendo DS

Nintendo continued there successful line of handheld consoles after the Gameboy Advance with the Nintendo DS. This console featured two screens, the bottom of which was a touch screen. To power both these screens it has a 67.028 MHz ARM946E-S and 33.512 MHz ARM7TDMI. The Nintendo DS sold even more consoles that the previous consoles.153.87 million consoles (all models). The DS was a huge jump for the market because a console with a touch screen hadn't been seen during its time, while as of 14/05/2013 there are now several different consoles/tablets that play touchs screen games.

Personal Computer

Computers had been used to play games since 1952 when the simple version of tic tac toe was created on the EDSAC, this idea didn't really take off because computers where being used in businesses and universities for people to do large math sums quickly. It wasn't until 1962 when 3 students at a university made "Spacewars" on a PDP-1 mainframe (normally used statistical calculations) but these games use large computers to run there simple games. It wasn't until the early 1970's when a company called International Business Machine (IBM) began development on  a small computer that would be able to go into someones home and preform the same basic tasks that larger machines could easily do, this idea was in development until around 1981.

Home PCs were considered better than the current generation of game consoles because they had better sound and graphic capabilities along with being upgradeable unlike home consoles which you were unable to upgrade. This gave home computers a big lead over consoles because quality was better so that they appealed to the younger market while still being able to preform the tasks that the older members of the family would want to do. Another key feature that i beleive made the computer better than home consoles is that they had a mouse and keyboard which made them better for playing first person shooters and strategy games. 

During the 1980's prices of computers fell because the technology used in them became easier to make so it all became alot cheaper. During this time there were three main comapines producing computers Commadore,IBM and sinclair

Nintendo and Sega's roles in the Arcade industry

Nintendo and Sega didn't have much of a role in the start of the Arcade Industry but once they saw the potention of the market, They both became key points in its development.

Nintendo:

Nintendo only entered this market in 1978 with an unoriginal game called Computer Othello but wasnt until 1979 when they first caught the publics eye with a simple game called Sheriff. This game was the first of its kind because it featured to dualsticks one for moving and one for aiming. While at the time the idea of 8 way joystick was discarded it is now used in almost all shooting games such as the Call of Duty series, Left for Dead 1 & 2 and The Gears of War trilogy allong with hundreds of other games. During this year Nintendo made another entry into the market a game called Radar Scope and was the first game to ever have three dimension third person perspective which again is now used in hundreds of games.
The next game that Nintendo made was called Space fever, the game itself was unoriginal and was simplely a coloured version of the popular game realise a year before Space Invaders. From 1980 to the present date, Nintendo built a number of game consoles but not many new technologies were introduced by them in this period.

Sega:

Sega caught the public's eye three years earlier than Nintendo were able too because of a game they named Moto-cross, the main reason that this received so much attention wasnt because it was one of the first motorbike racing games but because it was the first of its kind too have haptic feedback (the controller would virbrate if the player went off the track). The same year they realised Road Race one of the first forward scrolling racing games. The next time attention was drawn to Sega was when the game Secret Base was realised this was because it was a first games to have two player cooperative.
In the Arcade industry one of Sega's biggest success was a game called Eliminator, this was because it was the first Arcade machine to use coloured vectors. Allong with that it is the only Four player vector game ever made. The very next year Sega was in the spot light again because they had built one of them most elaborate vector games ever made. The game was based of the popular cult tv show Star trek and featured 5 different controls, six different kinds of enemies and over 40 levels.


Overall i beleive that Sega and Nintendo were cruscial to the Arcade Industry for the simple that without them the industry wouldnt have be able to expand at the right it did so it and the home console Inudstry wouldnt be in the place it was today.

Decline of the Arcade Industry

Over the past 30 years, the Arcade industry had grown dramatic and was now thanks to realises like donkey kong (1981) and pacman (1980). The industry around this time was worth 8 billion this was mostly due to that fact that game consoles weren't able to provide the level of graphics,sound quality or the atmosphere that came with going with few friends and playing against them.

This slowly began to change with the start of the fifth era of game consoles, often refered to as the 32 bit era but basicly the arcade machines were no longer able to give a better level of quality so people were beginning to see that it was cheaper to buy a console with lots of games instead of putting coins in a single machine for a short go on a single game.That was the fall of the Arcade machine simplely because they weren't able to compete with the cheaper option of the nintendo 64,sony playstation and the sega saturn.





The only reason that the Arcade industry didnt go completely bust was because of the features that had been added to make it feel more real such as cockpit controls, big car shaped boxes, and specialized controls for the games.

The history of Arcade Machines

Computer gaming started in the 1958 when the game Tennis for Two was build using equipment remaining from the second world war . The game itself was very simple and featured a side view of a table tennis table with a ball and paddles. After that in 1962 to the second computer game was made Spacewars, this game featured to players flying around a small star attempting to shoot each other while being dragged towards the small star placed in the centre of the screen.

After the success of Tennis for Two and Spacewars other people began to try and build there own arcade machine in order to be part of this fast to craze. One of the main people that did this was Nolan Bushnell who later co-founded Atari. Nolan Bushnell was one of the first people to realise that you could make a large amount of money so he built a very simple game called Pong the game featured the overview of a table-tennis court with a ball and two paddles. The game was so successful that there were reports of machines breaking due to the large amounts of coins being inserted into the machines on a daily bases. This was the main reason that atari had such a large control over the market, there wasn't much of an advantage it was merely they were first to establish their name in the market. Along with pong being realised in 1972 the Magnavox Odyssey was realised as the first home game console it featured several simple games all featuring different versions of Pongs.
At this point arcade machines such as Pong are dominating the market because graphics, sound and designs of the games, while home game consoling was still lacking being unable to compete with the higher level of quality offered by Arcade machines.

After the success of Pong, many more companies during 1975 began to try and enter the arcade market one of which was a game called Gun Fight and it was the first arcade machine to use a micro-processor because it gave the game better graphics and a much smooth animation. The game featured human to human combat and had a simple scoring system.


The years between 1978 and 1986 are refereed to as the golden ages of arcade machines is because arcade machines still had better processing power than the home consoles of that era so they had a very market using these machines instead of buying the consoles at home.
The machine said to have started the golden age is Space Invaders, This game is famous around the world for a number of reasons one of which is that it was the first game to have an increasing difficultly. The increasing difficultly wasn't actually part of the program because at the time the process wasn't quite powerful to move all the enemies around the screen so as the player begins to destroy the targets, The process begins to be able to handle moving the remain enemies around the screen so they begin to increase speed.
During this period due to the mass of money being made the technology involved increased dramaticly with stronger microprocessors allowing them to increase the gap of quality between Arcade and Home Console.

Over the years of 1978 to 1986 the Arcade Industry increased dramaticly due to two of the three many companies in the race to control the market, Sega and Nintendo both of these companies trying to out do the other and get full control of the industry, This meant they both were trying to improve their the technology so things like micro-processors became a lot more powerful and new interesting graphics were made to try and control the market.


After 1986 arcade machines began to lose there grip over the market because home consoles were finally able to keep up with the level of quality provided. This also meant that people were able to see that it was able to buy a home console because you would only have to pay once rather than have to constantly put money in to play just a single game while with a home console you were able to play a large number of different games once you had the game console. While the Arcade machine market is a former shadow of what is was in the "golden age" there are still a new game machines being made every year but they no longer have the perks of better graphics and sound quality but instead had to cope with the fact that it was easier to buy a home console because u could have a large number of games and you wouldn't have to keep adding coins into the machines.